AMY LEVY Amy Levy was born in London, England in 1861. She was the 2nd of 7 children of a wealthy Anglo-Jewish family. The children of the family were avid readers from an early age and enjoyed participating in typically Victorian parlor activities both literary and theatrical. They were a typical English Victorian middle class family
All 7 of them would "publish" literary magazines with Amy contributing poetry and plays. At the age of 15 Amy was recognized by har family as having some literary ability and sent to Brighton to study at Brighton High School. Here, in Victorian England and at the tender age of 15, she lived in her own apartment where her family would travel down to the coast to visit her.
In 1880 her first book of poetry Xantrippe and other verses was published. Her many friends tended to be other young, serious literary men and women with a political taste for Socialist teachings. Despite her obvious talent and success Amy was prone to bouts of deep depression which began in childhood. This didn’t prevent her from writing, publishing and travelling throughout Europe.
Toward the end of her life, her mental health was frail, there was not the recognition, nor the treatment for chronic depression that there is today.
On September 10, 1889 she shut herself in her room and lit charcoal and then inhaled the fumes; she was found dead by her mother and sister, she was just 28 years old. I find this particularly tragic after reading this poem, The Village Garden.
Here, where your garden fenced about and still is,
Here, where the unmoved summer air is sweet
With mixed delight of lavender and lilies,
Dreaming I linger in the noontide heat.
Of many summers are the trees recorders,
The turf a carpet many summers wove;
Old-fashioned blossoms cluster in the borders,
Love-in-a-mist and crimson-hearted clove.
All breathes of peace and sunshine in the present,
All tells of bygone peace and bygone sun,
Of fruitful years accomplished, budding, crescent,
Of gentle seasons passing one by one.
Fain would I bide, but ever in the distance
A ceaseless voice is sounding clear and low;--
The city calls me with her old persistence,
The city calls me--I arise and go.
Of gentler souls this fragrant peace is guerdon;
For me, the roar and hurry of the town,
Wherein more lightly seems to press the burden
Of individual life that weighs me down.
I leave your garden to the happier comers
For whom its silent sweets are anodyne.
Shall I return? Who knows, in other summers
The peace my spirit longs for may be mine?
Augusta Innes Withers (née Baker) was the daughter of a Gloucestershire vicar who was Chaplain to the Prince Regent. She married an accountant before 1825 and was active as a painter from at least 1827 to 1865. She became quite a famous Botanical Painter, Augusta exhibited between 1829 and 1846 at the Royal Academy and several other impressive venues. She was also a contributor to several botanist magazines and a teacher of her art. She was a member of the Society of Lady Artists; and her work remains an important part of the Royal Horticultural Society collection.
